324. Past
My family
Mom
Mom and questions
In her young years my mom wasn't all that well. She taught school, was good on the job, but when home she needed rest and my dad did most of the chores. She had Crones disease and was operated on and had some of her intestine removed. She was often moody and inconsistent and emotional and demanding. She lived until she was 89, but the last 5 years she was not well at all. I recall how as a young man I had bad allergies and some asthma. She was not always the most sympathetic. Maybe she just lacked the raw energy to be, and didn't have the reserve for one more negative in her life. Whatever the reason, she was not a nourisher.
Well, the last two years of her life she suffered a total breakdown of her body. Piece by piece it caved in on her. We had good long distant conversations and she didn't complain to me, maybe a noble act. My sister called her a “silent sufferer.” We both expected more complaining, something she had done when younger. But she kept just to herself.
One day on the phone with my sister, she said “I wonder if mom is suffering so greatly because of some kind of retribution?" Hmmm. Everything that could go wrong with her did. One medical treatment contradicted another with no coordinating center. The doctors she always had worshiped ended up not being of much help and there was nowhere to turn. So she suffered silently. Was some of this pain from wrongs she had committed? Personally when she ignored me or was impatient with my discomforts, was this a payback? How about others she did not sympathize with? Or was this from some spiritual denial? Was this caused by a character flaw?
Does it really work this way? Am I any better? Won't my flaws become apparent? Don't I deny too? Was mom just another flawed person who through fate met an unpleasant end? Or are there levels, and each level has an appropriate suffering?
Somehow, someway, it was probably a touch of everything plus something mysteriously more.
My family
Mom
Mom and questions
In her young years my mom wasn't all that well. She taught school, was good on the job, but when home she needed rest and my dad did most of the chores. She had Crones disease and was operated on and had some of her intestine removed. She was often moody and inconsistent and emotional and demanding. She lived until she was 89, but the last 5 years she was not well at all. I recall how as a young man I had bad allergies and some asthma. She was not always the most sympathetic. Maybe she just lacked the raw energy to be, and didn't have the reserve for one more negative in her life. Whatever the reason, she was not a nourisher.
Well, the last two years of her life she suffered a total breakdown of her body. Piece by piece it caved in on her. We had good long distant conversations and she didn't complain to me, maybe a noble act. My sister called her a “silent sufferer.” We both expected more complaining, something she had done when younger. But she kept just to herself.
One day on the phone with my sister, she said “I wonder if mom is suffering so greatly because of some kind of retribution?" Hmmm. Everything that could go wrong with her did. One medical treatment contradicted another with no coordinating center. The doctors she always had worshiped ended up not being of much help and there was nowhere to turn. So she suffered silently. Was some of this pain from wrongs she had committed? Personally when she ignored me or was impatient with my discomforts, was this a payback? How about others she did not sympathize with? Or was this from some spiritual denial? Was this caused by a character flaw?
Does it really work this way? Am I any better? Won't my flaws become apparent? Don't I deny too? Was mom just another flawed person who through fate met an unpleasant end? Or are there levels, and each level has an appropriate suffering?
Somehow, someway, it was probably a touch of everything plus something mysteriously more.
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